Thursday, March 11, 2004

Terrorist Nations? A Poet's View

I know that as I write this I put myself at risk but I must say that what I am going to say may be true. Lamenting September 11th is a true act, and is true kindness but the USA in many ways has asked for the resentment and has sewn evil in many places.

I for one have seen this with my own eyes. I worked in Bolivia as a lay volunteer in Cochabamba, Bolivia. I worked in the Carcel San Sebastian, a place with 4000 inmates in a 1/4 city block with men, women and children. Most of the people in this jail were encarcerated because of minor drug offences. The result of a minor offence was often, a man in jail for years before he even gets a trial, a wife who often had to become a prostitute to feed her family, and children who were forced to beg on the street.

I knew people in Bolivia who had their children, in the jail, without even a clean bed and who were forced to clean up their child in a bath of dirty water. Why is it that no one here wants to realize that out of our luxury comes so much pain and that people will always try to strike back?

This is one bit of evil terrorism caused by the selfishness of my nation. This kind of evil is spread around the world by American greed. As we today look back on the British Empire in a film like Ghandi and are repulsed by murder and evil in that repression, today we do this world wide and this creates hatred and resentment.

I can imagine a million people who are victims of the power of our nation and what kind of pain we cause to millions. The fact is however that we are not an 'evil' nation, what we are however is a nation that is engrossed in selfishness. September 11th was a horrible event and no one deserved to die, but the cause of terrorism is injustice, and that is the evil to be overcome.
But we continue like the fat man eat and eat consuming everything.